If you're afraid of someone scanning the remote's codes to gain access to your car, consider getting an aftermarket system.
If you're into building microcontroller based projects, using PICs, AVRs, or whatever, you could also consider rolling your own for the same reason. I've thought about building one using a two-way challenge/response scheme with a large number of combinations and non-obvious relationship, and an intentionally oddball communications protocol. No other like it in existence.
On the other hand, my vehicle is a 1986 GMC Safari van with bad paint, several dents, and 205,000 miles, so maybe not worth that much effort. Though I'd still be pissed if someone took it.
I'm sorry, but racists, sexists, and homophobes are outright scum! If someone actively goes out of their way to tell people that 90% of the world's population should be enslaved or that the best thing they can do is kill someone because of their skin color, religion, ethnic background, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability, etc., they have forfeited their rights to free speech.
They deserve no rights to spread their violence-inducing propaganda against the most disadvantaged of society through sites such as Stormfront [stormfront.org].
Bigotry against bigots is still bigotry.
Those who would claim the supremeacy of "free speech" obviously believe that James Byrd or Matthew Shepard deserve no legal protection against racists and homophobes, and such vile hatemongers should be tolerated.
Hmm... it's obvious that all us free speech advocates believe that, eh? The criminals who committed those heinous acts are just that. Criminals. And I think you'll have a very hard time finding any free speech advocates who believe otherwise. There's a word for judging an entire group of people without considering what they might individually be like: "prejudice".
Groups like the KKK have long been in decline, even though they've been free to express their ideas. It's the freedom of others that has brought about this decline, along with positive changes like women's sufferage, and the civil rights movement of the 1960's.
Hate speech is not ok. But restricting speech isn't an effective way to fight the hate itself. Much better to use your own free speech to expose the corrupt and promote good. Like the old saying, it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
Even though racial, sexual, national, religious, and other kinds of bigotry disgust me, I still think that censorship is a bigger threat than the speech it's supposed to protect us from. The same freedom of speech that lets the KKK spread it's evil ideas lets the rest of us oppose them.
If it's the latter, wouldn't it be very easy for Microsoft just to buy the company? It might potentially be much cheaper than fighting it in court (esp. if they lose).
That is a truly frightening thought. If Microsoft became the owner of those patents, they could then be used as a weapon against many competing products. Including, and maybe especially, open source ones. Those patents backed by Microsoft's well financed legal department and their privately owned politicians would be very evil indeed.
The great irony would be that Microsoft, who came late to the browser game, could then sue Netscape/Mozilla out of existence for patent infringement, even though it predates IE (unless you consider IE's NCSA Mosaic roots, though that, of course, was not created by MS).
I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' "Sirius Cybernetics Corporation", which, if I remember correctly, came to prominence by using time travel to go back in time and file patents so they could sue the original inventors for infringement.
I can't find any reference to it online, but in the early 80s or late 70s NASA came out with a design for a trans-continental train... in a vacuum tube.
I don't know where to find that. But with a little poking around on my book shelf, I discovered a relavent tidbit in Gerard K. Oneil's book "2081", first published in 1981. On page 125 of the "First Touchstone Edition", is this:
"Next my guide explained that we would travel to Erie on an underground high-speed vehicle called a "floater," which ran in vacuum through a tunnel, supporting itself on magnetic fields."
This patent is another ridiculous one. It's nothing new at all.
Indeed. I pondered this very idea myself about 20 years ago, airlocks, maglev and all. It never occurred to me that it might be patentable because it seemed so completely obvious. So it comes as no real surprise to discover the idea has been around since before I thought of it. Isn't that supposed to be one of the requirements for a patent? That it be non-obvious?
This CANNOT be accurate; no one gets $180,000 to make "a cobble(d) together... disc" of free software.
That was my first reaction as well. But I suspect the inaccuracy is in the description of what was paid for, rather than the amount paid. The article says they distributed 150,000 CD's. It doesn't say whether this was part of the $180K cost, but if so, I'd expect that 150K labelled CD's could account for about 1/4 of the cost all by itself. And "cobble together" might just be a poor description of having one or more programmers and other professionals doing all the needed localization of their distro, and possibly real world implementation/testing for their intended governmental uses. A few salaries can add up to $180K real fast.
So, the number really doesn't sound unreasonable. And when that cost is spread over the 110,000 machines the article mentions (10K already converted to Linux, 100K planned in near future), that's only about $1.64 per computer. Sounds like a bargain to me. I'm sure they'll have additional costs by the time it's all done. But I suspect the development cost of customizing their Linux distro will be a fraction of the licensing cost of Windows on a similar number of installations. Plus, they won't be under Microsoft's thumb. And with more efforts like this, maybe the rest of us can eventually squirm out from under it too. Kudos to them.
Couldn't you do this by booting a modern PC into DOS? Running compiled C it would be blazingly fast, your program would get literally 100% of the machine's capacity.
Well, yes. Or at least pretty close to the same effect. DOS (even just the part that stays in RAM) is bigger than the 2K colorForth core, but still miniscule relative to what's available on any modern computer. Good point.
(too bad Brodie's "Thinking Forth" is out of print)
I'm fortunate enough to still have my copy, as well as "Starting Forth". (And they're NOT for sale.) Brodie's Forth books are great. And "Thinking Forth" is a good read for problem-solving in general, even if you don't plan to program in Forth. A good acquisition if you can find it. I bought mine back when they were still in print.
Forth is totally stack oriented. It is difficult to determine where the OS ends and the language begins.
Operating systems are for wimps.
Those old enough to remember early 8-bit home computers like the C64, TI99, and similar, may recall that many of these "booted" straight into a BASIC editor/interpreter that was stored in ROM. Nothing between you and the hardware except for this and some very low level rom code roughly equivalent to a BIOS. A VERY low-fat system. Compare that to the multiple levels of abstraction and bloat we have now.
Ever think it might be sort of cool to run that kind of low-fat system on powerful modern hardware? Sort of like an ultimate C64 with, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, and many hundreds of MIPS. Maybe not pretty, but the raw computing horsepower at your fingertips would be awesome, provided you know the system well enough to use it. Replace that BASIC interpreter with the close-to-the-machine spartan efficiency of Forth, and it gets even leaner and meaner.
Chuck Moore, the inventor of Forth, has created an interesting little critter called colorForth that does just this. Stick the floppy in the drive, turn on the power, and boot straight into colorForth. The system is at your command. No OS, other than colorForth itself. The most bloated piece of software on the machine is the BIOS.
Just you. In complete control of your machine. What a concept.
Having a 486 processor does not necessarily mean it's PC compatible. I don't know whether this one is or isn't, but it's not reasonable to assume without some other info to go on. And even if it is compatible, I suspect it isn't an off the shelf PC.
Not to slam your basic point though. The 9 year old 486 sitting under my desk is running just fine 24/7 as a nat/firewall running Linux. And that IS plain ol' off-the-shelf PC. I had to replace a worn out power supply fan, but otherwise it's entirely vintage equipment. It seems to me that old PC's are more likely to be retired due to obsolescence than failure. 10 year old functional computers aren't unusual, regardless of whether it's a PC, Mac, Amiga, or just about anything else.
First of all, I doubt that the robot runs on Windows. Even Windows CE is too bloated for the bot.
But even if the bot runs on Windows (even full-bloan WinXP), I bet the nice and witty people from the OSS camp can do an even cooler toy that runs on OSS platform - Linux or *BSD, among others.
Personally, I think it's nuts to run an application like this on ANY full blown OS when a much simpler one, or even none at all, will do fine and perform much better. Straight assembly language programs running on the raw hardware can be a beautiful thing. And there are plenty of lightweight, high level language compilers and other tools that can also give good results, with no OS at all.
You make a good point, especially for general, open-to-the-whole-world applications like e-commerce. But it still seems like a good approach for a company to secure services for it's own private use, both lan and wan. It may be unwise to accept unknown parties as CA's, but your own organization, with which you are intimately familiar, is probably more worthy of trust than the biggest CA's.
Pseudo code works especially well with languages that are inherently hard to read. Thanks to pseudo code, I can still easily understand PIC assembly language programs I wrote 10 years ago. Without it, it can be hard to comprehend something I wrote 10 days ago.
The assembler uses a semicolon to identify comments. For my pseudo code lines, I put a slash immediately after the semicolon so I can extract the pseudo code but ignore other miscellaneous comments.
Funny thing is, having no formal training as a programmer, I hadn't heard of pseudo code before I reinvented it for myself. I even called it by that name, well before discovering that it was already a common technique.
(Oh, and I find it funny that Americans endulge in France-bashing. If it wasn't for their help during the American War of Independence then it's highly unlikely that there would even be a USA as we know it. And who do you think gave the Statue of Liberty to the US as well?)
While obviously some Americans do that, having the view from the inside, it's just as obvious that the vast majority do not. In fact, I don't personally know anyone who does. I have high regard for the French. As do many others. Don't let the jerks get under your skin. And please, don't let them make you think we're all like that. If you think Americans in general are France-bashers, or are "xenophobic, racist idiots", then you're as guilty of stereotyping as you seem to think we are. Granted, you didn't actually say you think all, or even most, Americans are like that. But the tone of your post makes one wonder.
As for the Statue of Liberty, and the assistance with winning our independence, all I have to say about that is "Thanks.".
That's an interesting idea. The Theremax kit from PAIA has control voltage outputs, including a "velocity" control voltage. Connect one of the control voltage outputs to one input of a comparator, and a pot to the other input, and you can then easily adjust the sensitivity of the setup. The velocity output could be used to tell the difference between quick "thrashing" motions and slower, presumably more controlled motions.
An idea of my own is to use a vibration sensing device, such as a geophone (though that may actually be TOO sensitive for this application), or a vibration sensing switch (like the ball-in-a-cage things that are sometimes used in car alarms), to detect shaking motions. Some circuitry could then be used detect either abnormally high amplitude motions if using an analog sensor like a geophone, or high frequency/duration motions if using a vibration sensing switch. A low-end microcontroller such as a PIC would be good for this, though it could also be done with analog and/or discreet logic. Such a device could be attached to a hand, head, or any other body part that still has some movement. This has a disadvantage in that it would require movement vigorous enough to be distinguishable from the norm, but it has an advantage in that the person does not have to locate an actuator or produce any precise movement. Just shake hand/head in whatever way can be managed.
Another thought is to attach a geophone to the person's bed/chair, with circuitry to detect both unusually high and unusually low vibration, possibly filtering out very short duration events as well. This could likely detect some kinds physical distress situations even if the person is unconscious, and could also be set off consciously by shaking any body part they are able to shake.
I happen to live near a commercial movie theater complex that has an IMAX. The Cinemark 17 in Dallas, TX. Cinemark's web site lists 4 other current IMAX locations, and 4 future locations.
Once you start creating humans for the sake of bettering other humans, you have made the judgement that certain humans are worth more than others.
That all depends on that very difficult question about what makes a group of cells qualify as a human being. And given that different people have different views on that, your assumption that cloning for stem cell research requires a "some humans are worth more others" judgement is simply not true, except for those who place the threshold for distinguishing a "group of cells" from a "human being" very low. Given that I believe that threshold to be somewhat higher, I have no problem reconciling my advocacy of stem cell research with my belief that it is wrong to judge some people as being worth more than others.
As for your "slippery slope" argument, I don't really need to address it specifically, because ALL "slippery slope" arguments are logically defective, as someone else has already pointed out.
...It might look good at first, but you have to examine all the possible end scenarios, and you have to take the greatest care that the worst of those scenarios stays hypothetical."
With that I agree. But one of the worst scenarios is that the benefits of these new technologies become available only to the elite or the corrupt, to the detriment of everyone else. Banning it effectively ensures that this scenario is the only one possible. If it's illegal, only those with enough influence to circumvent the law will have access. If the powerful and corrupt have exclusive access to technologies that have the potential to improve lifespan, and possibly even enhance their abilities, then that will give them even greater power with which to abuse the rest of us.
To me the ethical thing to do is to allow, and maybe even encourage this research to move forward. Legal and open, so everyone can see what's happening, and so that it's benefits cannot be hoarded by an elite few. Any attempt to legislate it out of existence will not only fail, but will make the worst case scenario the most likely outcome.
Look, I know medical (and other) technologies are not equally available to all people even when not banned. And I recognize that excessive measures to create an equal distribution can undermine the commercial incentives that drive much of this research, so please don't misread the paragraph above as advocating the socializion of these technologies. It's an imperfect and unequal world. I don't know how to make it completely fair. And I'm not sure that _complete_ fairness (whatever that might be) would be desireable even if it were possible. But I do oppose measures that will make the world more unfair. And I believe that anti-cloning and anti-stem cell resarch legislation does exactly that.
I've often wondered why so many evolutionists are reluctant to question their foundations. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
Maybe I can clear it up a little further.
"Questioning my foundations" is what led me to reject creationism, and favor evolution, in the first place. I can't speak for everyone, of course, but this seems to be true of many other "evolutionists" I've talked with. It is the height of arrogance to assume that someone is closed minded just because they have reached a conclusion different from yours. But I suppose it's a natural tendency to some extent. After all, if we hold a view, it's usually because we think it is correct. Each side would do well to remember that this is true of the other side as well. I can't count the number of times I've been guilty of this error myself.
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On the other hand, my vehicle is a 1986 GMC Safari van with bad paint, several dents, and 205,000 miles, so maybe not worth that much effort. Though I'd still be pissed if someone took it.
Remember that song? Bigotry against bigots is still bigotry. Hmm... it's obvious that all us free speech advocates believe that, eh? The criminals who committed those heinous acts are just that. Criminals. And I think you'll have a very hard time finding any free speech advocates who believe otherwise. There's a word for judging an entire group of people without considering what they might individually be like: "prejudice".
Groups like the KKK have long been in decline, even though they've been free to express their ideas. It's the freedom of others that has brought about this decline, along with positive changes like women's sufferage, and the civil rights movement of the 1960's.
Hate speech is not ok. But restricting speech isn't an effective way to fight the hate itself. Much better to use your own free speech to expose the corrupt and promote good. Like the old saying, it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
Even though racial, sexual, national, religious, and other kinds of bigotry disgust me, I still think that censorship is a bigger threat than the speech it's supposed to protect us from. The same freedom of speech that lets the KKK spread it's evil ideas lets the rest of us oppose them.
The great irony would be that Microsoft, who came late to the browser game, could then sue Netscape/Mozilla out of existence for patent infringement, even though it predates IE (unless you consider IE's NCSA Mosaic roots, though that, of course, was not created by MS).
I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' "Sirius Cybernetics Corporation", which, if I remember correctly, came to prominence by using time travel to go back in time and file patents so they could sue the original inventors for infringement.
"Next my guide explained that we would travel to Erie on an underground high-speed vehicle called a "floater," which ran in vacuum through a tunnel, supporting itself on magnetic fields."
So, the number really doesn't sound unreasonable. And when that cost is spread over the 110,000 machines the article mentions (10K already converted to Linux, 100K planned in near future), that's only about $1.64 per computer. Sounds like a bargain to me. I'm sure they'll have additional costs by the time it's all done. But I suspect the development cost of customizing their Linux distro will be a fraction of the licensing cost of Windows on a similar number of installations. Plus, they won't be under Microsoft's thumb. And with more efforts like this, maybe the rest of us can eventually squirm out from under it too. Kudos to them.
Chuck Moore's home page:
http://www.colorforth.com
Those old enough to remember early 8-bit home computers like the C64, TI99, and similar, may recall that many of these "booted" straight into a BASIC editor/interpreter that was stored in ROM. Nothing between you and the hardware except for this and some very low level rom code roughly equivalent to a BIOS. A VERY low-fat system. Compare that to the multiple levels of abstraction and bloat we have now.
Ever think it might be sort of cool to run that kind of low-fat system on powerful modern hardware? Sort of like an ultimate C64 with, hundreds of megabytes of RAM, and many hundreds of MIPS. Maybe not pretty, but the raw computing horsepower at your fingertips would be awesome, provided you know the system well enough to use it. Replace that BASIC interpreter with the close-to-the-machine spartan efficiency of Forth, and it gets even leaner and meaner.
Chuck Moore, the inventor of Forth, has created an interesting little critter called colorForth that does just this. Stick the floppy in the drive, turn on the power, and boot straight into colorForth. The system is at your command. No OS, other than colorForth itself. The most bloated piece of software on the machine is the BIOS.
Just you. In complete control of your machine. What a concept.
Having a 486 processor does not necessarily mean it's PC compatible. I don't know whether this one is or isn't, but it's not reasonable to assume without some other info to go on. And even if it is compatible, I suspect it isn't an off the shelf PC. Not to slam your basic point though. The 9 year old 486 sitting under my desk is running just fine 24/7 as a nat/firewall running Linux. And that IS plain ol' off-the-shelf PC. I had to replace a worn out power supply fan, but otherwise it's entirely vintage equipment. It seems to me that old PC's are more likely to be retired due to obsolescence than failure. 10 year old functional computers aren't unusual, regardless of whether it's a PC, Mac, Amiga, or just about anything else.
Being stuck in a room with Richard Stallman and Bill Gates is enough to make anyone secrete bullets.
You make a good point, especially for general, open-to-the-whole-world applications like e-commerce. But it still seems like a good approach for a company to secure services for it's own private use, both lan and wan. It may be unwise to accept unknown parties as CA's, but your own organization, with which you are intimately familiar, is probably more worthy of trust than the biggest CA's.
Pseudo code works especially well with languages that are inherently hard to read. Thanks to pseudo code, I can still easily understand PIC assembly language programs I wrote 10 years ago. Without it, it can be hard to comprehend something I wrote 10 days ago.
The assembler uses a semicolon to identify comments. For my pseudo code lines, I put a slash immediately after the semicolon so I can extract the pseudo code but ignore other miscellaneous comments.
Funny thing is, having no formal training as a programmer, I hadn't heard of pseudo code before I reinvented it for myself. I even called it by that name, well before discovering that it was already a common technique.
(Oh, and I find it funny that Americans endulge in France-bashing. If it wasn't for their help during the American War of Independence then it's highly unlikely that there would even be a USA as we know it. And who do you think gave the Statue of Liberty to the US as well?)
While obviously some Americans do that, having the view from the inside, it's just as obvious that the vast majority do not. In fact, I don't personally know anyone who does. I have high regard for the French. As do many others. Don't let the jerks get under your skin. And please, don't let them make you think we're all like that. If you think Americans in general are France-bashers, or are "xenophobic, racist idiots", then you're as guilty of stereotyping as you seem to think we are. Granted, you didn't actually say you think all, or even most, Americans are like that. But the tone of your post makes one wonder.
As for the Statue of Liberty, and the assistance with winning our independence, all I have to say about that is "Thanks.".
That's an interesting idea. The Theremax kit from PAIA has control voltage outputs, including a "velocity" control voltage. Connect one of the control voltage outputs to one input of a comparator, and a pot to the other input, and you can then easily adjust the sensitivity of the setup. The velocity output could be used to tell the difference between quick "thrashing" motions and slower, presumably more controlled motions. An idea of my own is to use a vibration sensing device, such as a geophone (though that may actually be TOO sensitive for this application), or a vibration sensing switch (like the ball-in-a-cage things that are sometimes used in car alarms), to detect shaking motions. Some circuitry could then be used detect either abnormally high amplitude motions if using an analog sensor like a geophone, or high frequency/duration motions if using a vibration sensing switch. A low-end microcontroller such as a PIC would be good for this, though it could also be done with analog and/or discreet logic. Such a device could be attached to a hand, head, or any other body part that still has some movement. This has a disadvantage in that it would require movement vigorous enough to be distinguishable from the norm, but it has an advantage in that the person does not have to locate an actuator or produce any precise movement. Just shake hand/head in whatever way can be managed. Another thought is to attach a geophone to the person's bed/chair, with circuitry to detect both unusually high and unusually low vibration, possibly filtering out very short duration events as well. This could likely detect some kinds physical distress situations even if the person is unconscious, and could also be set off consciously by shaking any body part they are able to shake.
I happen to live near a commercial movie theater complex that has an IMAX. The Cinemark 17 in Dallas, TX. Cinemark's web site lists 4 other current IMAX locations, and 4 future locations.
As for your "slippery slope" argument, I don't really need to address it specifically, because ALL "slippery slope" arguments are logically defective, as someone else has already pointed out.
With that I agree. But one of the worst scenarios is that the benefits of these new technologies become available only to the elite or the corrupt, to the detriment of everyone else. Banning it effectively ensures that this scenario is the only one possible. If it's illegal, only those with enough influence to circumvent the law will have access. If the powerful and corrupt have exclusive access to technologies that have the potential to improve lifespan, and possibly even enhance their abilities, then that will give them even greater power with which to abuse the rest of us.
To me the ethical thing to do is to allow, and maybe even encourage this research to move forward. Legal and open, so everyone can see what's happening, and so that it's benefits cannot be hoarded by an elite few. Any attempt to legislate it out of existence will not only fail, but will make the worst case scenario the most likely outcome.
Look, I know medical (and other) technologies are not equally available to all people even when not banned. And I recognize that excessive measures to create an equal distribution can undermine the commercial incentives that drive much of this research, so please don't misread the paragraph above as advocating the socializion of these technologies. It's an imperfect and unequal world. I don't know how to make it completely fair. And I'm not sure that _complete_ fairness (whatever that might be) would be desireable even if it were possible. But I do oppose measures that will make the world more unfair. And I believe that anti-cloning and anti-stem cell resarch legislation does exactly that.
"Questioning my foundations" is what led me to reject creationism, and favor evolution, in the first place. I can't speak for everyone, of course, but this seems to be true of many other "evolutionists" I've talked with. It is the height of arrogance to assume that someone is closed minded just because they have reached a conclusion different from yours. But I suppose it's a natural tendency to some extent. After all, if we hold a view, it's usually because we think it is correct. Each side would do well to remember that this is true of the other side as well. I can't count the number of times I've been guilty of this error myself.